5 Logo Design Tips to Help Tackle Your Next Project

Logo designing isn’t easy, especially when working with various clients with different industries. Few logos have the power to immediately draw forth feelings from us and it should tell people what you mean to them.

Knowing how to effectively translate your ideas into design is critical when it comes to selling logo designing services. Apart from solely focusing on the design brief, you’ll need to conduct a thorough research on the trends and current style in the industry of your clients.

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular brand logos design and what you can learn from them.

1. Stick to the basics

McDonald’s logo is one of the most recognizable logos around the globe and even a three-year-old toddler can easily recognize the brand by just looking at the logo. Truly, their golden arches separate their product from all other fast food restaurants.

Ever wondered what does it make the McDonald’s logo so successful? Let’s look at three important aspects of a successful logo.

Aesthetic: Needless to say, one of the first things to focus while designing a logo is to make it look appealing. Make sure you colors palettes are in harmony and the typefaces are well chosen.

Versatile: Versatility ensures that your logo stays cool everywhere from company letterhead to billboard advertisements. You can start the design in black and white, which ensure that design is clear and versatile. You may later add colors, well chosen typefaces and subtle effects.

Feel: A good logo design stays on message and evokes the right emotional response from the intended audience. Even though you can add tons of interesting things to your logo, it’s easy to get carried away with your design with that approach. The bottom line is to ensure that your logo communicates the intended message just as well.

2. Use symmetrical/asymmetrical balancing

One of the best things about symmetrical balance is that it feels stable and aesthetically pleasing. Symmetrical balance evokes feelings of calmness and orderliness. When it’s present in design the result is the kind of consistency, stability and order that we find in some of the world’s most notable brand logos.

However, the downside is it sometimes regarded as boring.

A few examples of symmetrically balanced logos are Chanel, McDonald’s and Motorola.

Asymmetry, on the other hand, will tend to communicate excitement and risk. It evokes feelings of modernism, movement, energy and vitality. Pepsi Co. and Barak Obama’s presidential campaign are popular examples of asymmetrical logos.

As asymmetrical design looks more interesting because of its more complex relationships between elements, it can be used to draw attention.

3. Leverage inconsistency in your design

One of the easy yet effective ways to improve your logo design project is by repetition of different elements. Repeating colors, visual elements and equally balancing white space throughout a design increases familiarity so that the design feels more attractive.

The logo of Audi is the best example that repeats visual elements throughout the design. It consists of four similar rings, which symbolize the merger of four independent motor vehicle manufacturers: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer.

Having said that, design rules are meant to be broken and you shouldn’t necessarily follow the repetition rule to make an awesome design. Rather, you can violate them in a purpose-driven and meaningful way. For example, Coca-Cola has successfully leveraged inconsistent design in their logo.

If you carefully look at the logo, you can identify that comparing with the term “Coca” in the logo, the baseline on “Cola” has been shifted down considerably.

Another example of inconsistency in the logo is eBay. There is no need to point out the inconsistencies in eBay’s logo since it entirely lacks cohesion and repetition.

4. Colors

Colors play a major role in how the audience perceives a brand. It also influences the intentions of its end customers as well. The right color combination can highlight your business’s strengths and draw customers to you.

Amazon’s logo is the best example that brilliantly uses color palettes to highlight what the brand is and for what it stands for.

Amazon corporate colors are black and orange. In the logo, the black color represents dominance, supremacy and elegance, while the orange color stands for pride and happiness.

Did you ever notice the arrow actually points from ‘A’ to ‘Z’? This represents that Amazon sell everything from A to Z. In addition, the arrow below the word mark also denotes the happiness or positive user experience during by shopping on their store.

5. Typography

Many companies have built their identity using typography alone like Coca-cola and IBM. Typography is obviously central to a good logo. And the beauty of it is that you can either create your own custom typeface or adapt an existing one from your favorite websites.

Sometimes to make a design look unique, all you need to do is to just remove or extend parts of letters. Let’s take a look at various logo examples that solely uses typography to build logos.

Make: This logo shows us the power of subtracting a piece from a letter to give new meaning to the logo.

Killed: At a glance, it may seem like the letter ‘i’ is killed off, actually it isn’t. The letter i was actually laid down the baseline; a cool idea to grab the attention of the audience instantly.

Over to you

Whether you’re looking to design logo for your own brand or sell it as a service, you’ll need to bring something fresh to the table that clients can’t refuse. Ultimately, you’ll need to understand your client’s expectations, and generate a logo that your client will be happy with.

What is your favorite logo design tip from the list? Would you like to add some more tips to the list? Let us know by sharing the tips on the comment section below.

Author bio: Shahzad Saeed is specialized in blogging and content marketing for startups and small businesses. He’s focused on writing in the e-commerce, marketing, and CRO niche. Connect with him on Twitter or hire him for your next writing project.